Copying machines, printers, and other image forming apparatuses need a refill after continuous use over an extended period of time, and degradables and consumables, such as toner cartridges and photosensitive body cartridges, must be replaced.
Throughout this document, we use degradables in reference to those photosensitive body cartridges and other photosensitive parts that wear out by use and consumables in reference to toner and ink cartridges and other similar parts that hold toner, ink, etc. that are consumed by use. However, degradables are also consumable in the sense that they have to be replaced with new ones after an extended period of use, and some toner cartridges include a built-in photosensitive body cartridge. In light of these facts, when degradables and consumables are not necessarily differentiated from each other, consumables collectively refers to both kinds of products.
The user of a machine that requires replacement of consumables typically buys new ones before he/she uses up old ones. By so doing, he/she can keep a stock of them and avoid situations where the machine becomes inoperative because he/she has run out of the consumables.
In the current payment system, the user can legitimately own consumable products only after buying them. Put differently, without paying, he/she cannot own them, much less to keep a stock of them.
Meanwhile, when a generous budget is a thing that is hard to come, the user needs to curb expenses on consumable products. Maybe he/she could do this by keeping a smaller stock of spare consumable products, but the stock would have to be refilled more often. He/she would fairly frequently have to bother to check the stock to find out how many of them are left unused and also the consumable products currently in use to know how longer they could be used. The user or manager of the machine would be typically responsible for doing this job, but could not dedicate his/her whole time to it. Under these circumstances, he/she probably could not, or would not, manage the consumables.
A likely result is that more than a currently necessary number of consumable products are bought and stocked.
To put the problem in a different perspective, recycle and reuse of consumables are being encouraged to create better environment. Recycle refers to the process of used consumables being collected, sorted depending on the material, and destroyed for reuse as raw material. Reuse refers to the process of used consumables being washed, polished, or otherwise treated quickly for reuse.
In the latter case, some toner cartridges have memory means to record history of each component. The history is taken into consideration when deciding whether the individual components are to be reused or discarded.
For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-126008/1999 (Tokukaihei 11-126008; published on May 11, 1999) discloses a toner cartridge with an EEPROM or other freely attachable and detachable memory means to record use history, including the lot number, number of times recycled, and accumulated number of pages printed, of a develop cylinder, photosensitive drum, cleaning blade, and other individual components in the toner cartridge. The technique enables appropriate control of toner cartridges collected after use as to whether they can be recycled or not.
There are situations where the spare consumables kept by the user are totally wasted: for example, the user has been renting an image forming apparatus from a leasing company, but returns it as the contract expires; or the user simply discards an old image forming apparatus that has been used up to its expected life.
Even when the user renews the contract, unless he/she rents a compatible model with the consumable products he/she has kept a stock of for the old model, they are totally wasted.
This is especially true in offices where vast amounts of pages are printed. Many consumable products therefore must be bought and kept in stock to satisfy the needs in exchange for a large amount of advance payment. If the foregoing situations occur, loss is very large accordingly.
The problem is partly solved by predicting how longer the photosensitive body and toner (or cartridges holding them) are usable. The prediction can be made by an IC chip provided in the consumable product to record data on operation conditions, such as the date and time the consumable product was last replaced, the total time of use of the consumable product since its installation, and the number of pages printed.
Using an image forming apparatus with the function to predict the remaining product life by electronic means may be somewhat helpful to establish a fairly reliable, automatic day-to-day control system that even works with a stock of a least number of spare consumable products possible.
Nevertheless, however precisely the prediction is made, the user still needs to pay to keep some spare consumable products at hand. Anyway, the precision of the prediction varies greatly depending on the performance of the algorithm involved, and the prediction is in no case 100% reliable.
To sum up the description so far, the user needs to keep spare consumable products at hand to avoid situations where the machine becomes inoperative because he/she has run out of consumable products. To this end, the user has to buy the consumable products in the current accounting system. In addition, the user may not actually use those spare consumable products he/she has paid for and let them waste.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-126008/1999 mentioned above is directed to the recording of use history of individual components of a toner cartridge and the determining as to whether the components are recyclable based on the history. The technique is aimed at reducing manufacturing cost of toner cartridges and making efficient use of energy and natural resources; however it does not give any solution at all to the undesirable expenses the user is forced to spend on spare consumable parts.
When the toner cartridge is assembled from more than one component, use history needs to be recorded individually for the components. To record this growing amount of data, the memory means needs to be expanded. Other problems include an extended period of time required to input the data, reduced manufacturing efficiencies, and growing costs. Besides, if the user desires to further record the number of pages the machine has been used for and/or the running hours the machine has accumulated so as to improve precision of recorded use history, the printer itself needs to have a function to write data in the memory means, which causes various problems including increasingly complex devices and processes.
Some image forming apparatuses developed so far have a toner-supplying toner cartridge installed in a developer.
The toner cartridge is designed to be freely attachable and detachable so that it can be replaced at a suitable time depending on the consumption of the toner. Under typical circumstances, the image forming apparatus is desirably used with an genuine, standards-complying toner cartridge made by the original manufacturer, because it is compatible with the structure of the device and its performance is guaranteed by the manufacturer.
Nevertheless, pirated toners, whose performance is not guaranteed by the manufacturer, are widely distributed because of their low prices and other reasons, despite the fact that various toners have been developed for use in electrophotographic image forming apparatuses and are available in the market.
Toner cartridges are a degradable product and are often counterfeited. Admittedly, a certain level of performance in photocopying may be expected with fake and non-guaranteed toner cartridges. It is therefore difficult to bring home to the user inconveniences incurred by the use, deliberate or by mistake, of counterfeit toners. The use of fake products not only fails to bring out the best performance of the image forming apparatus, but is also a cause for trouble.
Methods have been conventionally proposed to identify genuine replacement parts to determine if those installed in an image forming apparatus are original. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 59-145179/1984 (Tokukaisho 59-145179, published on Aug. 20, 1984) discloses such a method to identify an original replacement part whereby a photoelectric or magnetic sensor detects a specified mark borne by the original replacement part. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2-73264/1990 (Tokukaihei 2-73264, published on Mar. 13, 1990) discloses another whereby original replacement parts are equipped with a pressure-sensitive conductor of a complex shape to be distinguished from non-original replacement parts. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 9-185311/1997 (Tokukaihei 9-185311, published on Jul. 15, 1997) discloses still another whereby original replacement parts are equipped with a pattern of small lumps and dents which is detected by a mechanical switch with a normally open contact to be distinguished from non-original replacement parts.
There are advanced methods whereby not only the replacement part is checked for its genuine origin, but the image forming apparatus is controlled to operate normally only when the replacement part is identified as original. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 5-224479/1993 (Tokukaihei 5-224479, published on Sep. 3, 1993) discloses such a method to recognize an original replacement part being installed in the image forming apparatus, whereby the replacement part has an attached code label carrying a specified set of data, and the image forming apparatus is permitted to operate normally only upon the reading of the set of data.
A disadvantage of these methods is that they can be circumvented easily by third parties producing counterfeit goods and fall far short of eradicating fake parts from the market. Disposable replacement parts are particularly difficult to eradicate from the market, because third parties have to only collect them and replace nothing but toner for example, before introducing them into the market as new products. Another problem is that conditions in using counterfeit parts are difficult to recognize, making it difficult to perform maintenance. Besides, recycled replacement parts may be introduced into the market repeatedly even after they have worn out, because keeping track of the number of times recycled is impossible.
These problems are addressed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-69139/1998 (Tokukaihei 10-69139; published on. Mar. 10, 1998). The patent application discloses a method whereby the copying machine operates normally if an ink bottle (replacement part) is genuine and stops operating normally or records the use conditions of the counterfeit in the memory if not. This is achieved by the original ink bottles being equipped with a data carrier composed of a nonvolatile memory to record data specified depending on the model of the copying machine and the control section being provided in the copying machine to determine if the data recorded in the data carrier has normal values.
Accordingly to the method, however, any ink bottle compatible with copying machines of a particular model has the same data; third parties can analyze the data stored in nonvolatile memory and the structure of the data carrier with relative ease to make imitations, and once they get the know-how, it is practically impossible to stop them from distributing unauthorized imitations in large quantities.
The manufacturer and distribution manager of ink bottles cannot know that the users of the copying machines have bought imitations before a service person visits the users to pick up ink bottles or the manufacturer is notified so by the users. The manufacturer or distribution manager may notice the circulation of imitations only after a time lag.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 10-69139/1998 above further discloses a method to prevent third parties from collecting used ink bottles and other replacement parts only for the data carriers and attaching those data carriers to non-genuine parts for new use. This is achieved by destructing the data carriers when the replacement parts are detached from the machines to replace them. However, something must be done to avoid destruction of the data carrier when the replacement part is detached only for maintenance. Someone must therefore select destruction or non-destruction of the data carrier, depending on whether the replacement part is detached for maintenance or replacement. This is both bothersome to that person and may cause the person to make an error that leads to unintended destruction of the data carrier.
The foregoing methods are aimed at achieving a common goal of eradicating non-original parts, by notifying the user that a non-original part is installed in the image forming apparatus, disabling non-original parts, etc. However, none of them is capable of producing a satisfiable result in the attempt to squeeze non-original parts out of the market.
The eradication is difficult to achieve, because tinkering with the mechanism so that it can identify non-original parts and reject to operate normally with non-original parts is hardly enough to stop third parties from making non-original parts based on originals. Another factor is the price gap between original and non-original parts. The user would find it hard to refuse cheap prices of non-original parts and buy originals instead, as long as the image forming machine works with non-originals without serious, immediate consequences.
Wide distribution of non-original parts does not only eat into profits of the manufacturer and dealers of original parts. As mentioned earlier, the user of the image forming apparatus is also a victim: non-originals do not offer the same level of guarantee to their performance as original parts and could be a cause of trouble if they do not operate properly.
Imitations come in some forms. Some are disposable replacement parts and collected by third parties after they are discarded. These are refilled with new toner or another kind of recording material and reintroduced into the market, disguising as new products. Some are recycled without controlling quality, such as the number of times recycled.